“I have this teacher,” I said, “Mrs. T.”
But Yardley wasn’t listening. He was looking at the open space between the school buildings. It was just lawn. It wasn’t a sports field or anything. But Yardley said, “‘Football games were important events that brought the entire school together, from the pregame pep rallies with bonfires and cheers to the postgame parties.’”
“They lit fires?” I said. Our pep rallies now meant that one Friday in September, everyone who wasn’t a football player sat in the bleachers in the gym while Coach B., who was also the football coach, spoke too loudly into the microphone about what a great group of guys he had playing for him this year. Then he’d introduce the guys and pronounce most of their names wrong. “In the gym?”
“No, not in the gym,” Yardley said.
“But where?” I said. I wasn’t being a wise guy. I really wanted to know. “Did you have bonfires during pep rallies at your school?” I asked.
“‘I prefer to keep myself out of what is, after all, his biography and not mine,’” Yardley said. We didn’t talk after that. Exley picked up a little steam as we went up the big Washington Street hill, then left on Route 67. We were getting close, and I started feeling nervous again. A few seconds later, Exley took a right and passed between the stone pillars and under the big metal arch that read BROOKSIDE CEMETERY. We bumped along slowly. Yardley didn’t tell Exley where to go, and Exley didn’t seem to need directions. He turned this way, then that, all on his own. Something started falling from the sky that wasn’t quite rain, wasn’t quite snow. It was cemetery weather. The sky was so low it seemed the taller trees — the pointy pines, the mighty oaks — might punch right through it. I looked at Exley’s face in the rearview. He looked calm, in control, as he smoked his cigarette and squinted out the windshield at the gravestones on our right. If ever there was a picture of a man on the way to see his own grave, this wasn’t it.
“Here we go,” Exley said, and stopped the car. No one said anything or made a move for a second, then another. Yardley was looking out his window. “‘He had originally specified that he be cremated and his ashes “dropped in the Lost Channel of the St. Lawrence River,”’” he said, making air quotes here to let us know he was acknowledging his sources, “‘but in the fall of 1991 he changed his mind and asked to be buried next to his father and mother in Watertown.’” He looked at Exley, then at me. He looked like the minister in the Public Square, when he was about to lay to rest the dead soldier. “‘This was done,’” he said. He opened his door, got out, and started walking. I opened my door, got out, and followed. The snow was about a half-foot deep, and Yardley didn’t have gloves, but he bent over and started brushing snow off something. Gravestones, I guessed. I came up and stood next to him. This is what I saw:
EXLEY
CHARLOTTE M EARL E
1906–1989 1906–1946
To the left of that was more snow. And then farther to the left I saw this:
FRED HUNTINGDON
JENNINGS
1879–1946
“He was buried here,” Yardley said. “I saw the gravestone.”
“Huh,” I said through my hands. I’d put them over my mouth so that Yardley couldn’t see I was smiling. “Maybe you got confused.”
“Confused,” Yardley said.
“Because the guy buried here is named Fred, too,” I said.
“I’m not confused about anything,” Yardley said. He got down on his knees and started digging in the snow with his hands, in the space between Exley’s parents’ stone and this Jennings guy’s stone. I looked back at the car. Exley was still in the driver’s seat, smoking another cigarette. “Look, you can see where his stone was,” Yardley said. I turned back to him. He’d dug all the way through the snow to the ground. True, the ground was a little chewed up, a bit more dirt than grass and some small rocks scattered around. But this was November in Watertown. This was just the way the earth looked this time of year; it would look that way until May. The spot he was pointing at didn’t look much different than any other patch of earth in Watertown or in the cemetery itself. It just didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t see it.”
“This is insane,” Yardley said. It was weird. Yardley didn’t sound mad, not exactly. He sounded amazed, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing or saying. In his book, Yardley had written that he “shared Exley’s ardor for professional football and, in those younger and stronger days, for distilled spirits.” He looked like he could have used some distilled spirits right about now. “You moved the headstone,” he told me.
“I didn’t,” I said.
“Then he did,” Yardley said, pointing in the direction of his Volvo. “That”—I could see him struggling to find the right word to describe Exley. I felt bad for him. He’d written a book that was supposed to be the final word on Exley. Now he didn’t know what word he was supposed to use next—“man,” he finally said, “obviously dug up the headstone.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “And he’s not just a ‘man.’ He’s Exley. You know he is.”
“Oh, come on,” Yardley said. “He doesn’t even sound like Exley.”
“He does,” I said.
“No, he doesn’t,” Yardley said. “The real Exley wouldn’t sound that way.”
“What way?”
“He wouldn’t speak only in quotations from A Fan’s Notes,” Yardley said.
I tried to raise one of my eyebrows at Yardley. I’d never been able to do it before, and I couldn’t do it now. I’m sure it looked like I had something in my eye. But Yardley apparently got the idea. His face grew red and he sputtered for a while.
“The man and woman who are supposedly his parents are buried here,” Yardley finally said. “Don’t you think if he was really their son he would have at least gotten out of the car?”
I shrugged. “You know what he’s like,” I said.
“‘Fuckin’ Fredness to the end,’” Exley shouted from the car, scaring both of us. “You wrote that in your book.”
Yardley charged over to the car to talk to Exley. But I stayed where I was, looking at Exley’s parents’ stone. I wanted to tell them something. I thought of what my parents might want to hear about me if they were dead and I wasn’t. They’d probably want to hear, He’s fine. Don’t worry about your son. He’s doing OK. But that didn’t seem quite right. Mr. and Mrs. Exley would never believe their son was OK or fine. Finally, I just said what I felt. “I’m sorry you’re dead and buried here,” I told them. “But I’m so glad your son isn’t. I need him.” Then I turned away from their headstone and walked back to the car. The car was still running. Yardley was in the car now, with Exley. Exley was in the passenger seat, his back to me, smoke from his cigarette pouring over his shoulder. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see Yardley’s: his eyes were wide and he was nodding a lot, to show that whatever Exley was telling him, Yardley understood. When I got near the car, Yardley noticed me and smiled; it was a tight-lipped, sympathetic smile, and I wondered if that meant Exley had been telling Yardley about my dad. Anyway, I opened the back door and climbed into a cloud of smoke. I waved the smoke from my face, then closed the door.